A Proposed Entropy Measure for Assessing Combat Degradation

Abstract

This paper describes a method for assessing the combat degradation of an army, based on the Shannon entropy measure. It is shown that this measure is useful for analysing combat degradation due to casualties, since it is in broad agreement with the values established from past battle experience. It is also shown that the measure can be used to evaluate the degree of confidence in the outcome of training manoeuvres when weapons simulators are employed.

Keywords:

• analysis
• defence
• entropy